.htaccess rewrite with url masking

Question

I need to do a url rewrite maintaining following condition:

• rewrite http://domain.net (or http://www.domain.net) to http:// ip:port/folder
• redirect any other request like http://domain.net/logout?query=1 to http:// ip:port/folder/logout?query=1 (preserve query string and all)
• mask the rewrite so that novice users cannot detect the ip (the address where they are redirected to) from the browser url bar
• as for masking, a visible redirection like http:// domain.net:port/folder is also acceptable.

What I tried so far: The following results in 500 error.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(*.)?domain\.net$
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ http:// ip:port/folder/$1 [L,R,QSA]

The following works without the masking:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^www\.domain\.net [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)         http:// ip:port/folder/$1 [L,R,QSA]

Answer 1

You can do this only if ip:port and domain.net refers to the same server. Otherwise you have to use some script that pulls the remote content from ip:port for a request to domain.net, if you want to hide ip:port.

Otherwise you can proxy the request to another server using the [P] flag.
See: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/flags.html#flag_p